Donald Trump’s response to the problem of police brutality against black and brown people is, unsurprisingly, more police.
"The problem in our poorest communities is not that there are too many police, the problem is that there are not enough police."
You know, like there are more money launderers, sexual predators, and tax evaders to be found in the inner cities than there are in high society. Of course, the issue of a sophisticated, empathetic, and professional police force is too much of a complex matter for Trump. Much easier for his brain to comprehend a police force operating with the mentality of slave patrollers and in a culture of Comply or Die. To add insult to injury, Trump credits the policies of Rudy Giuliani for bringing “those thugs to heel in New York” and has intimated that if he were to win, Giuliani would play a significant role in his administration. Over-policing on steroids with the discredited, dehumanizing Stop & Frisk as its centerpiece. Thank goodness that as it stands now, the buffoon only has a 3% chance of winning the election. Our concern is not so much with idiot Trump, whose views on matters of national importance will soon be irrelevant anyway, but rather how our majority community sees the issue of police brutality. How those for whom Trump has become a mouthpiece see the world of law enforcement.
A recent poll from Gallup seems to suggest that the cries of heartache and frustration from activists concerned about black lives have mostly fallen on deaf ears and cold, unresponsive hearts. According to Gallup, there has been a 12% increase in respect for police over the last year.
In addition to the large majority of Americans expressing "a great deal" of respect for their local police, 17% say they have "some" respect while 7% say they have "hardly any."
Gallup has asked this question nine times since 1965. The percentage who say they respect the police is significantly higher now than in any measurement taken since the 1990s and is just one point below the high of 77% recorded in 1967. Solid majorities of Americans have said they respect their local law enforcement in all polls conducted since 1965.
What, I ask you, could lead one to have more respect for law enforcement over the past year? Other than one being willfully and callously blind and deaf that is?
I spent some time looking at the numbers over at The Guardian’s The Counted and came away feeling downright depressed.
- In 301 days police killed 881 people
- 130 were unarmed
- 212 were Black
- 141 were Hispanic/Latino
- 15 were Native American
- 16 were women
- Approx half of those killed were white
The killing of Renee Davis - one of 881 cases:
Twenty-three-year-old Renee Davis was five months pregnant and was the mother of three ranging from ages five to two. The police got a call that she was struggling with depression and possibly suicidal. They were asked to do a wellness check on her. Armed with the knowledge of her delicate mental state, the police still managed to kill her in the presence of her two young children. Why?!! How?!!
The sheriff’s office said they responded to a report of a suicidal person and found Davis armed with a handgun. Deputies ended up firing multiple rounds, fatally hitting Davis. Two of her children, 2 and 3, were in the home at the time of the shooting. Her 5-year-old child was staying with friends.
I get the feeling that those who profess to have so much respect for cops are laboring under the mistaken view that only those others are being killed. Not so. People of color are killed at a much greater rate but in raw numbers, white people — white people struggling with mental illnesses in many instances — are also being sent to early graves. The issue of over-policing will only be solved when the majority community acknowledges that there’s a problem and set about doing something about it. Not more police, but better policing is what we are demanding.
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What to do with our Michael Brown Over-Policed Rights Act:
- Print out the Michael Brown Over-Policed Rights Act and send it your representatives.
- Email the law to your representatives and to civil rights organizations.
- Tweet the law to your representatives and to the Democratic presidential candidates.
- Call your representatives and ask what are they doing about police brutality in general and implementing our law in particular.
Contact your United States senator and contact your representative in the United States Congress. Call their office. Talk to a staff member. Call every week. Set up meetings. Organize a group to go to a meeting with your congressperson.
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About Support the Dream Defenders
Members of the Daily Kos group Support the Dream Defenders launched four ongoing projects:
1. We came together to support the Dream Defenders in Florida and their mission, our first project and the origin of our name. The Dream Defendersdefend the Dream of Martin Luther King Jr. by "develop[ing] the next generation of radical leaders to realize and exercise our independent collective power; building alternative systems and organizing to disrupt the structures that oppress our communities." Please donate here.
2. Our Michael Brown Over-Policed Rights Act, crowd-sourced at Daily Kos in the fall of 2014 after the death of Michael Brown. Our bill quickly earned endorsements from the NAACP and the ACLU. The NAACP forwarded our bill to members of Congress, and we distributed it to members of the Congressional Black Caucus and other progressive members of Congress. President Obama signed into a law a small piece of our bill in December 2014. The Department of Justice included parts of our law in their reports on Ferguson, Missouri, in 2015. Our state version of the MBOPRA is currently in committee in the Kansas legislature.
3. Our Freedom of Information Act project. Nineteen Republican governors chose to kill poor people by not expanding Medicaid. Ebola has killed about 9000 people in total; Republican governors kill 23,000 people PER YEAR by refusing federal support for Medicaid, a story ignored by traditional media. Our project forces those governors to out themselves, clapping them in a Catch 22. With the support of readers, we publicize our results through letters to the editor, press releases, and petitions.
4. Our Law Enforcement Documentation Act of 2016.
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